you
drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of
a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You
have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express
train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an
hour and beaten it."

"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?"

"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. You seem to be at
the very point where the lightning starts and the thunder-crash is
born. All about you are roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up
on you and down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I never
heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, it is a common thing
for operators on the ground even in fair weather to get shocks of
atmospheric electricity down the anchor ropes of captive balloons."

Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of exciting times reporting
the great yacht races from captive balloons (with reporters turning
seasick in the plunging basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from
balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called parhelions) cast
on clouds, and wonderful light effects, as when a marveling aeronaut
looks down upon a sea of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through
black clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath.

I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, say above three
miles, the voice almost fails to serve, or, rather, the rarefied air
loses in great part its power of voice transmission, so that in the vast
silent spaces of the sky one aeronaut must literally shout to another in
the same basket to make himself heard. One would say that the great,
calm heavens resent the chattering intrusion of noisy little men.

II

WHICH TREATS OF EXPERIMENTS IN STEERING BALLOONS

IN all their experiments at the farm, Professor Myers and Mme. Carlotta
have worked on individual lines, he striving of late years to perfect
his skycycle (which is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging
of propellers and fans underneath), while she has been content to gain
skill in steering a balloon of ordinary shape by merely moving her body
and utilizing varying air-currents, for the wind blows in different
directions as you ascend.

It is remarkable how the position of an aeronaut's body may alter a
balloon's movements. It is possible, for instance, to make a balloon
ascend or descend, without touching valve or ballast, by a simple